


A Circle of Silver

by theferalking



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Add tags as I go, Babys first fic in over a decade, Eventual widomauk, Illustrated Fic, M/M, Slow Burn, Werewolves, astrid is a whole 1/4th elven, blumenthal drei, different backstory for caleb, eodwulf was that kid with an early growth spurt who still kept growing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:40:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24920959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theferalking/pseuds/theferalking
Summary: In the end, the wolf was just a man.
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	A Circle of Silver

**Author's Note:**

> Eodwulf is 13 and has just had a growth spurt. Bren and Astrid are 12.
> 
> WARNING that there is an illustration of a dead man at the end of the prologue.  
> There should be a buffer between the last words and the image.

When Caleb was a child there had been rumor of a werewolf. 

It came out when Catha was full and overspilling, dappling the wheat fields like snow in the summer. On most nights the air would be full of the sound of coyotes howling in the nearby woods and the cautious barking of farm dogs that took up the night watch guarding every cow and sheep from their hunts. It was in early Brussendar, a week before the midsummer festivals that only one howl pierced the night sky. There were no songbirds, no insects, no frogs from the creek beds. Only an eerie silence that accompanied a thick air of wrongness. 

Bren wouldn’t have known if his father hadn’t been watching warily through the window with his sword half unsheathed in his lap, if his mother hadn’t sought to get him in the loft to sleep over an hour earlier than usual. He had peeked out of the loft window but had seen nothing beyond the distant lights of lanterns and hearth fires. It was as if a ghost had crept into town.

No amount of wariness was enough to keep him awake, however, and he had drifted asleep, arms folded on the sill and his chin tucked into the crook of them. He dreamed of the moon full over head and of dark trees carving up towards the sky like angry claws. They grew denser and denser, forming into iron bars like a jail cell. He woke up to the pink flow of morning tainting the wheat red like blood spilt over the earth.

Breakfast was far less unnerving. A quiet affair, father already gone into the fields and mother plying him with porridge while he was too sleepy to properly process what he was eating. Afterwards, he went with his mutti to market to trade vegetables for some salted fish and flour. Rumor was that the Schäfer family had lost two sheep dogs, and the fencing that bordered the woods were rent with deep claw marks close to where the wood was splintered. 

He went to explore later with Eodwulf and Louis. The path along the forest was overgrown, more grass than dirt and blissfully devoid of traffic. It was easy for them to get lost in the tall grass and make their way to Schäfer’s field unnoticed. Sure enough, the gate lay broken, the boards broken down the middle and splintering. The claw marks carved through them had been large enough for all of them but Eodwulf to stick their tiny fingers in.

“Vater said it was a werewolf,” Wulf had mentioned as he chewed on a stalk of grass. Louis had laughed as he swung down from a nearby pine tree, dusting needles off of his clothes. 

“A werewolf? It was probably a bear!” Louis raised his hands over his head, fingers spread out as far as they could.

“Bears are not afraid of dogs,” Wulf argued, staring off into the woods. “What do you think, Bren?”

Bren traced his fingers through the claw marks again. It was like a haze leached through them, dark and malignant. It felt like spider webs sticking to his skin, tacky and barely there but there all the same. “Feels wrong.”

  


Eodwulf looked baffled as Louis’ brow furrowed. “Wha-”

“YOU KIDS!” They all jerked to see Emerson Schäfer waving at them with a spade in hand. “GET OUT OF MY FIELDS THIS INSTANCE! THERE ARE DANGERO-” 

Bren didn’t hear the rest as Wulf cursed quietly under his breath and grabbed both of them by the wrists, pulling them into the very woods the creature had come from.

“Eodwulf!” Louis hissed and tried to tug his hand free. “What if the werewolf-”

“Oh, you believe in it now?” Wulf glanced over his shoulder at him and Louis bit the inside of his cheek and gave him a dirty look. “That’s what I thought. Besides, sun’s out. Nothing to worry about here.”

Bren didn’t say anything, peering around them nervously as they moved through a dried up creek bed and then a worn deer trail through the grass and bramble that led them close to the muddy road that ran through their little village. Eodwulf finally released both of them and Louis rubbed at his wrist. He had run off not too much longer, muttering excuses about needing to do chores at home. 

“Did you mean it?” Bren asked him. He was more at ease now, listening to the peaceful sounds of people at work, chickens clucking in the ditches and an annoyed donkey refusing to move on the road. He waved at one of his mama’s friends as Eodwulf heaved a sigh.

“Mean what?”

“The sun part,” Bren turned to look back at his friend, stuffing his fingers in his pockets. They still itched from earlier, like the wrongness had followed him. 

“Ja,” Eodwulf ran his fingers through his hair, black curls falling back into place as unruly as ever. “When Vater was in the military, one of their men got bitten. It took a whole month for them to know what by, and by then the curse had sunk in, you know? When the full moon came he turned into a beast and tried to kill them and ran off into the woods. They found him the next day naked in a field, human again.”

“And then what?” Bren tipped his head to peer up at him through his bangs.

“And then they killed ‘im.”

\----------

Astrid's house was the nicest one in all of Blumenthal. She didn’t look it but her mother was half-elf and her grandparents, though distant, wanted her to have the basics of education. The basics for elves was a wealth to them. Bren and Eodwulf both had spent hours in Astrid's room reading and this evening was like any other. 

Well… perhaps it was a little different than others. They had dug through the library and had found a dusty book wrapped in blue cloth. “I think this is a…beast...iary? It has _beast_ in it anyways.” She looked pleased with herself as she jumped down from the wooden stool she had been tiptoed on and waved them over to the small table near the window. They peered over her shoulders as she flipped carefully through pages with magnificent illustrations and curled text. She stopped finally and held the book carefully so the pages were displayed clear and brilliant. On the left side of the page was the warped figure of a wolf walking as a man and above it written in coppery ink:

“A circle of silver around the neck  
The Queen of poisons on its breath  
A wreath of fire around its legs  
Will bring a werewolf to its death.”

“That is rather straight and to the point, isn’t it?” Eodwulf mumbled and Bren snorted before he could stop himself.

“If all you want to know is how to kill it,” Astrid gave him a wry smile before flipping through one- three- five pages of straight text before the image of a hyena-like creature was greeting them. “But if you want to actually know about it….” 

He huffed and waved his hand, “Read on then.” 

As it turned out, Eodwulf's story about his dad's friend being bitten wasn’t far off at all. It was a curse transferred by drawing blood- whether that was by teeth or claws didn’t matter much. The only reason the werewolf didn’t breed many more of its kind is that it often killed its victims in the same breath it inflicted them with its curse. Bren’s fingers itched when she had said that, wondering if the wrongness he had felt in those claw marks had wormed its way under his skin as well. 

The feeling lingered long after he left Astrid’s house that evening, long after he had finished his chores and had eaten the vegetable stew his mother made. It was still there when he pulled Frumpkin under his blanket as he laid down in the loft and it had been insistently there as he stared off into the sky as the moon rose again, as full as the last day.

Whatever wrongness Bren felt hadn’t accumulated into anything however. When he woke to the sound of the howling again, he could only feel relief in the fact that it was pale smooth fingers that clutched at his chest instead of fur and claws. He sat up and peered at the window only to jerk away as his father called up. “Bren, get away from the window!” 

He peered over the edge of the loft nervously and his father was securing the bolts on the shutters of the downstairs windows. The kitchen table had been moved in front of the door. 

“Do you think the trap will work?” Bren heard his mother whisper as his father moved towards the loft ladder. 

“Don’t know,” his father had a frown deep enough to pull lines down his face. It made him look eerie in the light of their hearth fire. His mother somehow looked smaller, more tired than he had ever seen her. She worried her fingers through her braid, pulling it loose only to start winding it back together again. “I think it would fool a coyote, but-”

“It is smarter…?”

“I reckon it is,” he ran his fingers through his beard, his other hand still poised on the ladder. “Used to be human. We’ll have to see come sunrise.” 

With that he started up the ladder, several wedges of wood stuffed under his arm and nail tips sticking out of the edge of his belt where they were tucked. There had never been shutters fixed to their loft window. Instead, they had simply tied up a waxed canvas to keep out the snow, wind and rain when weather was foul. Bren would sleep by the fireplace at those times, Frumpkin warm and lazy and content by his side. He shivered now even though it was hot enough that his clothes stuck to his body.

“Here,” his father had him hold the wood still as he nailed it in place. Bren didn’t know if it would really stop a werewolf from getting into their home but he supposed it was something. “Alright. You stay up here, okay?” His father rested the hammer in his lap, his other hand resting heavy like lead on Bren’s shoulder. 

“Ja, I will,” he nodded warily. His father squeezed his shoulder gently before kissing the top of his head. He could feel the tension in his body as he stood and watched him ease his way down the ladder again. He seemed impossibly tall, even from below and Bren couldn’t imagine anything making his father feel afraid, let alone his mother, who had talked down angry mules and cows alike.

Though… a wolf was probably worse than an angry cow.

And a werewolf… well, he didn’t know, really.

Bren didn’t remember falling asleep that night but he woke up to light filtering through the cracks of the wood over his window as their rooster crowed. Downstairs his mother was toasting some of yesterday's leftover bread and frying some eggs. His father's boots were missing from the doorway.

“Hallo, my little star,” his mother called as he sleepily made his way down the ladder. His feet had barely touched the packed dirt of their floor before the door was opening and his father was walking back in, shaking his head. Her mouth twisted in a frown as she muttered, “I see,” and set to plating their breakfast. 

They all ate in silence that morning and his father was gone before Bren even finished. His mother was quiet as they left the house for market, walking down the well trodden path as if in a trance.

Bren followed behind her like a shadow, peering through the tall grass of the neighboring fields, at fences and grazing sheep, the worn stone chimney of the tavern that had fallen in twice since his father was born. There was no sign of a wolf that he could tell but it’s presence lingered around everyone they passed by, like a low and eerie fog.

He parted ways with his mother in the market, claiming to need to help Astrid with something. His mother shooed him off, “Be home before nightfall. The moon will be full yet.” 

There was a further weight to her words and her smile looked frail but she turned away, a basket balanced against her hip. He watched her for a moment longer before he darted off towards Astrid’s home only to run off the path the moment he was out of sight. 

It was nerve-wracking to go to the forest's edge and down the same deer path Eodwulf had taken them before. He could hear voices further in the woods- the hunters likely setting more traps for the wolf. There were no sounds where he was going though, not beyond the sway of grasses and leaves. No bird song, no frog trills, no locusts. When he approached the broken fence it somehow felt even more desolate than before, like whatever magic ran through the wolf’s claws had sunk dark and deep in the very ground below it. 

He touched it again, felt the tingling under his skin. It was just his nerves. He traced the splintered wood, nails catching on the rough edges to break it down further. Nothing had happened to him last night, not from touching it, not from magic. It was just a superstition then. He drew his hand back and rubbed his fingertips together-

__

Snap!

He jerked his head towards the woods as something ran through it and stumbled back with a gasp. His sight was enveloped by a wall of wild grass and by the time he stood whatever had made the sound was long gone. Even so… he picked up a sturdy looking stick as he walked back towards the woods.

It was quiet still but under the bow of the trees sounds began to filter in. There was an armadillo pushing through the litter of leaves not too far off and a squirrel was chattering loudly at a creature further up in the canopy that Bren had to guess was similar in shape. He eased up a little, climbed up on the large decaying trunk of a fallen tree. The wood creaked under his feet and he hummed as he held out his arms, stick still loosely held in one hand, and balanced clumsily across it. 

It only took a few steps before his foot slipped off the side of the tree hard enough to break bark loose. It slid into the grass with enough force that he fell after it, grunting as the air was forced out of him by the impact.

“ _Gotter,_ ” he hissed as he drew in a pained breath and then another. He pushed himself up and felt at his head- aching but dry. At least he hadn’t split it open like Thomas had a few weeks earlier when balancing on a fence.

Village boys were stupid, the lot of them, and Bren was no different. 

He blinked a few times, his vision spotted with black dots that grew clearer with each moment. It took his brain a little longer to kick in, to analyze what exactly he was seeing. Not an arm’s length in front of him, pressed through broken blades of glass and imprinted so deeply into a bed of star moss that it was more mud than green, was a remarkably large paw print. 

It wasn’t too dissimilar to that of the coyote that roamed the very woods he sat in but it was humongous. He lifted his hand before he was aware of what he was doing and laid it over the print, fingers not even catching the edges. He only touched it for a heart beat, fingers flinching back with the same terrible feeling as the claw marks on the wooden fence before. 

Something snapped in the woods behind him and he gasped before he could stop himself, head jerking up to peer rapidly into the trees around him but he saw nothing, no one, and definitely not a wolf large enough to swallow him whole. 

“Alright… alright… there is nothing here,” he murmured to himself in a voice gone weak with nerves. He pressed his hand against the ground, careful not to touch the paw print again, and pushed himself back to his feet. There was a tremble in his legs, in his hands that didn’t seem to leave him even when the print was long behind him. 

Instead of going back to town he moved deeper into the woods. The creek that ran through it crossed ways with an old path of moss covered stone. It led uphill to an old temple in a cave. Mutti had said long ago when the old ones still walked Wildemount it had been a place of worship for a terrible god with feathers like fire that stretched onward over the sky like a fearsome sun. Whether that was true he couldn’t say. The worn cave walls lacked any markers they might have one had for such a god but the villagers had erected a shrine for the Dawnfather there. It was a crude thing born in the ashes of Zeidel as the Empire burned their heathen ways to the ground. A simple stone monument with the carving of a sun along the top of it, like a halo over one's head. 

Perhaps it was just, Bren thought, if the god before had been such a terrible burning being as well. The Dawnfather, the true sun, was kind and just and blessed them with warm summer and strong wheat and corn crops most years. 

They had built a proper temple a long time ago before Bren’s parent’s had been born. It was made of cut stone and had running fountains and a great colored glass panes along the side with a hole where the roof should have been that allowed the sun to light it inside out and cast the nearby fields aglow with a rainbow. It was rarely used by the hard working folk as dirty as they tended to be, and most prayed at home at their private shrines. It was rare for anyone at all to walk the path to the old temple- so much so that Bren was startled when he saw a figure there knelt on the hard earth of the cave floor with his forehead touching just below the halo. 

“Ah… hallo?” Bren murmured and the figure jumped and turned towards him. It was a man, much paler than Bren with arms bruised well enough that he looked like his father after he had gotten in a tavern fight. He was shirtless, shoeless, indeed the only article of clothing he had was an ill fitting pair of trousers that were fraying around the ankles. He had short dark auburn hair that almost seemed like blood where it was sweat slicked to his forehead, and his grey eyes were wild, fiercely bright and intense, even in the darkness of the cave. 

“Oh- uh,” whatever tension in the air broke quickly as the man let out a startled laugh and pushed his hair back with a shaky hand. “Hello to you too.” 

He looked back at Bren again but his eyes looked normal, tired. They were ringed with dark circles more bruised than the rest of his body and Bren felt bad for feeling scared in the first place. Whoever this man was, he looked like he had been through something.

Maybe chased through the woods by the wolf?

“Am I in the way?” The Common was clumsy and unpracticed on his tongue.

The man blinked owlishly at him before awkwardly gesturing for him to come in. “Not at all. I just uh, stumbled upon this and thought it might be a good idea to pray.” 

Bren thought it would be rude to say he looked like he needed a little blessing so instead he walked in and knelt beside the man, lifting his hands to brush the edges of the halo as he closed his eyes for a moment. 

The world drifted away until it was just the sound of his breath rattling in his lungs, his heart beating through his chest and pulsing in his fingers. He was never sure how he was supposed to pray if the gods could see all. Wouldn’t the Dawnfather simply see him and know? 

He was brought back to the world as the man coughed and sat back on his haunches with an aching groan. 

“Damn.” Bren flinched and looked hesitantly at the monument and back before he let his hands drop in his lap, fingertips itching. The man drew his hand over his face, fingers lingering over his mouth for a long moment before he dropped his own hand to his thigh and sighed. “Sorry, it's been a rough week. Think everything’s starting to catch up to me.” 

He stood and walked towards the entrance of the cave, looking up at the sky where it peeked through the leaves. “How old are you?” 

“What?” Bren asked, voice strange in his own ears and the man laughed, giving him an apologetic look. 

“Sorry, that must have sounded weird. You look young- I have a little brother about your age. Thought I’d come down this way to visit him.” He looked back out through the trees as if lost. 

“In Blumenthal?” Bren stood but didn’t get any closer, fingers stretched out to touch along the halo again. 

“No, out further. Ever heard of Pride’s Call?” 

“Ja,” Bren nodded as he thought back. He had seen it on the map framed on the wall of Astrid’s library. “Near the mountains? I thought it was a dwarven city.” This startled a laugh out of the man and he turned back towards the cave and gave Bren a crooked smile. One of his teeth was missing. 

“Is Blumenthal a human village?”

Bren felt his cheeks heat up as he sullenly dragged out a, “Noooo.” Mostly human, yes but they had elves and dwarves and that one tiefling merchant who had a small house near the market. 

“Yes, well, I gather lingering on the doorstep of Druvenlode won’t get me down the road any faster.” He wiped his hands on his pants although it did nothing to wipe away the dirt or dried blood from the scrapes on his hand. Bren glanced over them and frowned.

“Wait.” The man didn’t say anything in return but he obediently lingered, staring at him. “There is uh, there is a wolf-man in the woods at night. Blumenthal has an inn. Or if you are poor, my family has a barn. No one would turn you out right now, I think.” 

The man looked at him with something soft and sad in his gaze. 

“I’ll just have to consider that. Thank you-” 

“Oh, ah, Aldric.” 

“Thank you, Aldric. I’ll be seein’ you then.” He dipped out of the cave and disappeared into the woods before Bren could work up the nerve to ask him his name as well. By the time he peered out after him, the man was long gone and the sky was growing dark and heavy with an incoming storm. Perhaps the Dawnfather was not happy with them after all….

\----------

It was raining hard by the time Bren made it back home. His mother ushered him inside and fetched his spare clothes and some linen to dry off with. He hung his wet clothes out near the fireplace and nursed a warm cup of dandelion tea as his mother and father disappeared into their bedroom, the only place with a semblance of privacy in their very small home. 

He could hear them talking, a low murmur. Usually he was a good son, he minded his own business when he’s clearly not wanted instead of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. He couldn't help himself now however. There was an anxious feeling oozing through his gut and it moved his bare feet slowly and quietly over the packed earth and it pressed his ear to the door that was cut too roughly to really seal properly. 

“It struck at the Bellinger’s farm last night.” His father’s voice was weary. 

“I feared something went wrong. The mill house was empty and Maja was nowhere to be seen. Nobody knew….” She didn’t have to say it for Bren to know that it was suspected. He bit his lip as he listened but was overwhelmed by the silence. There were two Bellinger’s- brothers who both ran the farm they inherited from their father. Louis was the son of one of them, but…

Surely he was safe. 

Bren’s fingers dug into the door frame as he waited with baited breath and finally, finally his father heaved a sigh.

“They didn’t barricade their door. The damn thing got in and killed the whole lot of them.” His mother gasped and Bren almost did as well. He bit into his fist to keep from making a sound but his breath had quickened and his heart was drumming miserably in his own ears. “There’s barely anything left to bury, Una. We found Elmar’s hand but…. Maja, Louis? We couldn’t even find their clothes.” 

Bren had to walk away. He was sure his parent’s heard him but they didn’t reprimand him, didn’t act like they had at all. There was no more murmuring, a deafening silence stretching across the house for minutes and minutes, and Bren stood in the doorway staring out into the rain as he cried and waited for the pain to die down into something more bearable. 

When he finally turns around his mother is there waiting for him. She looks like she has cried too- as she should. His mother always went to the mill house every day without fail to see Maja. They spent hours gossiping during the cold seasons when there was hardly any farm work to do. She didn’t have any words, and he didn’t either. Instead he hugged her, hiding his face against her chest like a much younger child and she held him close like he was all she had in the world. 

None of them had the appetite to eat that night and they all went to bed early after barricading the doors, the windows. His father brought their bedding up into the loft and they all slept together with Bren between them like when he had been too young to climb the ladder and sleep alone. It took him awhile but the sound of them breathing and their warm presence on either side of him lulled him to sleep long before a wicked howl sounded through the woods.

\----------

Bren woke up to the sound of the door slamming open. He sat up and glanced around to see he was alone, even Frumpkin having found his way down from the loft already. He peered over the edge to see his father in the doorway, his mother looking up from where she had been preparing breakfast. 

“We caught it.” 

“What?” Bren could barely breathe as he quickly hurried down the ladder. “You caught it?”

“Ja. Not in any of the traps we had set out for it but in an old deer snare. Kurt and Sven were checking their traps this morning and found the man hanging by his foot still half-crazed.” He made a swinging motion with his hand and his mother grimaced. 

“What are they going to do with him? Has it been decided?” She wiped her hands on a piece of linen and then worried with her skirts. Bren placed a hand on her arm to help steady her nerves though he hardly felt any better.

“They put him out of his misery,” his father said frankly. “He’s eaten people and there's no coming back from that. Even if a healer cured his curse he’d be taken to prison or worse.” He crossed his arms and sighed as he leaned against the door frame. “He wasn’t one of ours though. Don’t know where he was from. He had nothing on his person.” 

“By the light….” His mother dipped her head briefly then took a deep breath and laid her hand over Bren’s. “I hope you men plan to bury him.”

“Eventually. Don’t know much ‘bout that curse other than it’s in the blood. We’ll have to wait until a scholar can come down from the capital and tell us if it’s safe. The priest is going to have a look at him though…” 

Bren barely paid attention beyond that. It was hard to believe something so terrible had come in so swiftly and was already gone. Not that it had left without taking a price but…. He shivered- it was hard to believe it was gone just like that.

\----------

“Over here!” Eodwulf called from further ahead in the woods. They had been looking for hours after Rubert and Nicolaus had claimed they had found it and Valerie just a few days before. It seemed like all the other children in the village were going to find the dreaded wolf and it would be rotted and gone before Bren could ever lay eyes on it.

Not that he really wanted to see it but well…

Everyone else was looking for it so he should as well, right?

It didn’t matter because they soon created the hill, Astrid gasped as she looked to where Eodwulf was pointing. Hanging from the thick branches of an old oak was a corpse. It was still mostly intact, seeming unbothered by any animals but the summer heat and humidity were taking its toll on it and it smelled absolutely terrible. 

Bren grasped his shirt as he stared at it with a grimace knowing very well he’d never forget how it looked. 

“First time seeing a dead thing?” Wulf asked and looked at the two of them knowingly.

“As if you have,” Astrid gave him a dirty look. “I hardly think a dog counts and….” 

She gestured at it weakly, but didn’t look half as nauseous as Bren. Thankfully with their bickering they didn’t notice quite how pale he had gotten.

The man wore nothing but ill fitting breeches and had auburn hair so dark he could barely distinguish the color of it from the blood dried in it and on the ground below. It made sense really, the man was so out of sorts and in such bad shape… but he hadn’t been violent, hadn’t tried to bite or even get too close to Bren. It was hard to believe that he killed and ate Louis and went to pray after.

It was hard to look at him and see the beast that had eaten three people whole in one night, had left a paw print so wide and deep in the ground that it swallowed up Bren’s hand, had the strength and veracity to break three rungs of a fence down the middle. But he had….

In the end, the wolf was just a man…

And was long dead with the pain he had created. 

TW: Below the cut is a graphic illustration of a dead man, don’t scroll down if you don’t want to see it.  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-  
-

  



End file.
